The present invention relates to a pelletization method for raw royal jelly.
Raw royal jelly is produced by honey bees in a similar manner to honey, but the composition thereof is fundamentally different. This raw royal jelly is the foodstuff for queen bees that young worker bees have synthesized and manufactured within their bodies, using honey and flower pollen as raw materials. More specifically, 1) worker bees collect flower pollen, 2) they knead this pollen together with honey from the flowers into a “dumpling” form that they carry back to the nest, 3) these “dumplings” are fed to young bees for up to ten days after birth, then 4) after passing through the digestive systems of these bees, the raw royal jelly is reconstituted by the salivary glands and is secreted as an “astringent-tasting milky-white liquid” from endocrine glands in the heads of the bees.
Raw royal jelly contains a moderate amount of the three main nutritional components (proteins, sugars, and fats); is rich in vitamins, minerals, and amino acids; and furthermore contains over forty different nutritional components such as a wide range of enzymes; where these nutritional components are in a good balance. In addition, raw royal jelly has an unknown substance among its nutritional components, which is called the “R substance” from the initial letter of royal jelly.
There is actual proof of the effects on diseases obtained by assimilating raw royal jelly, such as preventing aging by activating the autonomic nerves, treating autonomic ataxia, expected prevention of diabetes, mitigation of the symptoms of chronic hepatitis, and preventing cancer.
Products such as raw royal jelly and royal jelly products have been attracting attention as medical supplies and health foods having the above-described effects, and they have currently become standard health foods with consumptions that increase each year.
The royal jelly products on the market are used in fields such as medical supplies and health foods. In addition to the raw products, they are presented in various other forms, such as in capsules, as dehydrated powders, or as granules.
Since raw royal jelly is a natural product and the effective components thereof are included without any transformation, the optimal state is one in all of its nutritional components can be assimilated 100% unchanged. However, such preservation is disadvantageous in that is inconvenient and the products are difficult to ingest. Raw royal jelly must be stored in a refrigerator for short-term preservation or in a freezer for long-term preservation, which makes it difficult to transport while traveling, which is extremely inconvenient. In addition, raw royal jelly has an astringent taste in the mouth when taken, and there is a tingling sensation as it passes through the throat. It has a characteristic taste and smell which gives many people an uncomfortable feeling, so it can not be said to be suitable for everyday use.
Powdered royal jelly and also royal jelly in granule and tablet forms, which can be stored easily, are on the market, but each of these commercial products has been subjected to a freeze-drying process. Since this means that the products have been heated for a fixed time to a temperature on the order of 40° C. to 60° C. during the freeze-drying process, the above-described effects engendered in the nutritional components such as the above-described known substances and the R substance are greatly damaged. This is because the proteins within the raw royal jelly are susceptible to heat and are transformed thereby.
A method of manufacturing powdered raw royal jelly that has been disclosed involves adjusting the pH of a suspension of the raw royal jelly; separating the supernatant liquid and insoluble components, after maintaining the suspension at conditions above room temperature and pressure; subjecting the thus-separated insoluble components to heating in an alkaline aqueous solution, then mixing with the above-described supernatant liquid to obtain a clear royal jelly solution; adjusting the pH of that clear royal jelly solution to be neutral; mixed with a diluting agent; then obtaining the powdered royal jelly by spray-dehydrating or freeze-drying. In this case, any of the alpha starches, soluble starches, dextrins, cyclodextrins, lactose, sucrose, guar gum, or alginic acid can be used as the diluting agent.
With this method, the raw royal jelly is subjected to acidity processing, heating at a temperature and pressure above room temperature and pressure, alkalinity processing, and heating during the spray-dehydration or freeze-drying, so it is inevitable and even natural that the various nutritional components of the raw royal jelly undergo some form of transformation. Since there's an unknown effective substance called the R substance in raw royal jelly, as described above, it is not possible to conclude that this substance will be transformed by that processing, even though analysis of the known substances in raw royal jelly before and after heating has not shown any change in the effective component weights thereof due to the heating process. (Refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI5-103604.)
Since raw royal jelly usually has a moisture content on the order of 60 to 65% by weight, which encourages the growth of mold, it is necessary to preserve it in a freezer or refrigerator. Even if the moisture content of the raw royal jelly is reduced to about 30% by weight, mold starts to grow thereon after about seven days. To solve this problem, when raw royal jelly is pelletized by using a substance such as an pregelatinized starch, which is generally used as a diluting agent, the present developers have determined it is impossible to use a dehydration method at room temperature and pressure but without heating to dehydrate the mixture to a moisture content at which mold does not occur, because the speed at which the dehydration occurs is slow.
The present invention was devised in order to solve these problems of the necessity of freezer or refrigerator storage that is a disadvantage in ensuring that all of the nutritional components of the raw royal jelly are 100% assimilable, together with the resultant difficulty of ingestion, with the objective of providing a method of creating an easy-to-ingest pelletized royal jelly that can be stored at room temperature, where the method involves mixing the raw royal jelly with a powdered foodstuff but not subjecting the resultant mixture to any processing that could transform the nutritional components of the raw royal jelly, such as acidity processing, alkalinity processing, or any heating at above room temperature and pressure.